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My "new" SC 1903A3

My new to me Smith Corona 1903A3. I was too busy(worked 40 hours in 3 days) to post pics this past weekend and the weather was bad. The sun just popped out and thought it would be a good time to take some pics. (Thanks to Buckshot for the inspiration in another post.)

Oct 43' receiver date, Aug 43' SC barrel date. Mechanically in excellent condition, the wood has typical dings, dents, and scratches, as surplus weapons should. Looks to be all Smith Corona so far. Overall I am very happy with this one so far.

Looks good Scott. I am sure you plan on taking it out for a spin on the range. Don't be like me, I have not fired any of mine, just never got around to it.
What ammo do you have on hand? I have not heard of any ammo restrictions on them, like they recommend on the Garand. Even so figured I would use
GI ammo if I shoot them.

Looks good Scott. I am sure you plan on taking it out for a spin on the range. Don't be like me, I have not fired any of mine, just never got around to it.
What ammo do you have on hand? I have not heard of any ammo restrictions on them, like they recommend on the Garand. Even so figured I would use
GI ammo if I shoot them.

Thank you! Going to the range Saturday to put some rounds through it. I am going to pull it all apart for a good cleaning and inspection first though, I'll post pics here as I do that. I shoot all of my guns as much as possible, although I have just a wee fraction of what you have! Lol

I bought some S&B M1 Garand ammo for it from Midway, 150gn 2700 FPS. I also have a box of standard load Winchester 150gn to run through it.

Looks great and is a nice addition to a milsurp rifle collection. I always had better luck with 03A3 rear sights as opposed to 03 ladder.
The stock seems to have lighter color than most 03s and 03A3 from the photos, is it light?
Or just the sun?

Last edited by Norton; 03-12-2018 at 07:34 PM.

We thought about it for a long time, "Endeavor to persevere." And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union

Thanks. It was a must have for my milsurp collection, it filled a hole in it. That is one of the reasons I wanted an A3, my aging eyes like peep sights much better. The stock is a little light, it's walnut but is a bit dry. Going to clean it up good and put a couple cotes of BLO on it. That should make it look a little better/darker.

Edit: Looking at the original pics and the rifle itself, it is darker than in the pics posted here. The color got washed out in translation.